Pharmaceutical care: main vectors of development and prospects perspectives

Introduction. Provision of pharmaceutical care makes it possible to use medicines optimally and efficiently, apply professional knowledge of pharmaceutical workers effectively for the needs of the health care system thus promoting pharmaceutical industry development and increasing availability of medical care. Despite long existence of the pharmaceutical care concept in the world pharmaceutical practice and its positive contribution to public health, our country is facing difficulties of putting the concept into practice due to the lack of both a unified approach to its content and the availability of regulatory documents.

Objective: the aim of the research was to analysis and generalization of main vectors of the pharmaceutical care concept development and search for further perspectives of pharmaceutical care use within the health care system based on the international approach.

Material and methods. The study used the methods of information retrieval, generalization, formalization, logical, comparative and structural analysis. The search was conducted for the sources of information in the field of pharmaceutical care with the help of the domestic and foreign databases: Elibrary, Web of Science, Core Collection, Scopus, PubMed predominantly for the period of 2013–2014 years.

Results. Pharmaceutical care has been implemented into the pharmaceutical practice and used by many countries around the world what is due to the increase in consumption of medicines, health care costs and shortage of medical personnel, the need to reduce the burden on the medical community when treating patients with mild illnesses who seek for medical aid from specialists. Professional competences of pharmaceutical workers allow them to reveal, prevent and solve the problems related to the ways of taking medicines, their effects on the organism, and safety of patients. The pharmaceutical care concept motivates pharmaceutical workers to use their experience, knowledge, and skills in provision of medical care during medication based on new approaches and strategies. Involvement of pharmaceutical workers into the fight against COVID-19 has identified wide range of their potentials and abilities as active subjects within the healthcare system, in our country as well, which is especially important under the conditions of medical staff shortage. Pharmaceutical practice of many countries involves pharmaceutical practitioners extensively in provision of primary medical and sanitary care to sick people, they collaborate with the teams of medical professionals prescribing medicines. Despite numerous studies and scientific development, however, the health care system of our country does not show interest to promoting pharmaceutical care concept intensively or to enhancing the role of pharmaceutical workers within the public health.

Conclusion. Thus, using to apply global trends to the pharmaceutical care concept introduction into the health care system, to enhance the role of the pharmacist`s profession in the society, to expand the areas of the pharmacist`s competences and skills for the sake of medical service availability especially under the conditions of medical staff shortage, to prevent and identify all possible unfavorable effects of medicines, to develop professionally effective collaboration of patients with the medical personnel and pharmaceutists so as to achieve overall involvement and compliance of all the participants in the process of medication and getting pharmaceutical assistance thus raising the responsibility for the outcome of the patient`s therapy.